Chewy Chocolate Chunk Cookies.

Please note that this post has a lot of text. The reason is because I need to explain to you exactly what makes these cookies so chewy, soft, and thick in order for your cookies to be a success. If you do not like reading the text, you may simply skip down to the recipe.

Wednesday is National Chocolate Chip Day, so I made you a new chocolate chip cookie recipe to celebrate! And I’ve made them 5 times in the past two weeks. No lie.

I had to test them over and over and over again to make sure they were as good as the first time before sharing with you. You only get the best of the best. I made 2 batches with chocolate chunks and the rest with other goodies inside. And yes, eachbatch is perfection.

There are hundreds of chocolate chip cookie recipes out there. Everyone has their favorite! But today’s recipe stands out in my mind. They are the chewiest of chewy. The softest of soft. Thick, underbaked, buttery dough, and exploding with chocolate. Warning: this chocolate chip cookie requires a tall glass of milk.

Don’t get me wrong. I still have a huge space in my heart (and tastebuds) for my Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. It’s one of the most popular recipes on my website. You all love them!

Today’s recipe is similar, but I increased the chewy factor.

The cookie dough is made from standard cookie dough ingredients. Flour, leavener, salt, sugar, butter, egg, & vanilla. It’s the ratios of those ingredients that make this recipe stand out against the rest. 2.25 cups of flour is mixed with 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and my favorite: cornstarch! I used 1.5 teaspoons of cornstarch in this recipe. It gives the cookies that ultra soft-baked consistency we all know and love. Plus, it makes the cookies super thick.

You’ll use melted butter in this cookie recipe. Most of the cookies on my website call for creaming softened butter with the sugars. My new chocolate chip cookie recipe requires melted butter. It increases the chewy factor in the baked cookie. Melted butter can make your baked cookie greasy, so I made sure there was enough flour to avoid that from happening. Since you are using melted butter, you don’t need a mixer for this cookie recipe! Ironically, I’m giving away a free KitchenAid Stand Mixer right now.

To the melted butter, add 3/4 cup of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of white sugar. Extra brown sugar increases the moist-factor, softness, and chewiness in the final cookie. The white sugar induces slight spreading so your cookies don’t remain balls of dough in the oven. A little bit of spread is a good thing. Too much spreading? No thank you. Thankfully, these cookies remain nice and thick in the oven because of the cornstarch, flour, and baking soda.

Another way to ensure these cookies are extra chewy is to add an extra egg yolk. The extra egg yolk adds richness, soft tenderness, and binds the dough. So you will need 1 egg and 1 egg yolk. You can freeze the extra egg white in a ziplock baggie for up to 1 month or use it to make my Skinny Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes.

Finally, add 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract and your chocolate chunks. I used a combination of Nestle Chocolate Chunks and Mini Chocolate Chips. You can use standard size semi-sweet chocolate chips or milk chocolate chips if you prefer.

The dough will be soft and the chocolate chunks may not stick because of the melted butter. Just keep stirring it. Next step is to chill the dough. I can’t stress this step enough. Chilling the dough is mandatory for most of my cookie recipes. It allows the ingredients to settle together after the mixing stage. But most importantly: cold dough results in thicker cookies. This cookie dough will spread in the oven if you bake it at room temperature. Cover the cookie dough and chill the dough for at least 2 hours, and even up to 3 days. I chilled this dough for 1 day. After chilling, let your cookie dough sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before rolling into balls.

After chilling, sometimes I roll the cookie dough into balls and freeze them in a large zipped-top bag. Then I bake them in their frozen state – keeping them in the oven for an extra minute. This way you can have just one of two cookies whenever you want!

These cookies are huge. About 3 Tablespoons of dough is rolled to make one cookie. The batch only makes about 16 cookies since you will be rolling them so large. It was the perfect amount to share with Kevin’s family for Mother’s Day and have extras for our cookie jar. Feel free to make the cookies smaller (about 2 Tablespoons of dough per cookie) instead. If you do that, be sure to reduce the baking time to 8 minutes. For me? Well, sometimes you just gotta have a monster size chocolate cookie.

When you remove the cookie dough from the refrigerator after chilling, the dough will be slightly crumbly. The warmth of your hands rolling it will make it stay intact. Roll the cookie dough balls taller, rather than wide as I discussed and showed here. This little tried-and-true trick will result in thicker cookies. I do it for every single cookie I bake.

The large cookies take 11-12 minutes in the oven. Try not to overbake them. The cookies will appear very soft and undone. However, they will continue to bake for about 10 minutes as you allow them to cool on the cookie sheet. The cookies you see here were baked for 11 minutes.

In short, here are my secrets to thick, soft, & chewy Cookies:

Underbaked cookies are the secret to softness. Using cornstarch in the dough is another secret to softness, as well as the secret to thickness. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. Adding an extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be taller than wider increases thickness. Using melted butter (and slightly more flour) increases chewiness. Chilling the dough results in a thicker cookie.

Directions:

Click here for step-by-step photos and careful explanations of all of these steps.

Toss together the flour, baking soda, cornstarch and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.

In a medium size bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and white sugar together until no brown sugar lumps remain. Whisk in the egg, then the egg yolk. Finally, whisk in the vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix together with a large spoon or rubber spatula. The dough will be very soft, yet thick. Fold in the chocolate chips. They may not stick to the dough because of the melted butter, but do your best to have them evenly dispersed among the dough. Cover the dough and chill in the refrigerator for 2 hours, or up to 3 days. Chilling is mandatory.

Take the dough out of the refrigerator and allow to slightly soften at room temperature for 10 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 325F degrees. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.

Roll the dough into balls, about 3 Tablespoons of dough each. The dough will be crumbly, but the warmth of your hands will allow the balls to stay intact. Roll the cookie dough balls to be taller rather than wide, to ensure the cookies will bake up to be thick. See this post for more clarity and a photo. Put 8 balls of dough onto each cookie sheet. Press a few more chocolate chips/chunks on top of the dough balls for looks, if desired. Bake the cookies for 11-12 minutes. The cookies will look very soft and underbaked. They will continue to bake on the cookie sheet. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cookies stay soft and fresh for 7 whole days at room temperature. Cookies may be frozen up to 3 months. Rolled cookie dough may be frozen up to three months and baked in their frozen state for 12 minutes.

*Salted butter may be used instead. Reduce salt in the cookie dough to 1/4 teaspoon.

Room temperature egg + egg yolk are preferred for even disbursement. Typically, if a recipe calls for room temperature or melted butter, it's a good idea to use room temperature eggs as well. To bring eggs to room temperature quickly, simply place the whole eggs into a glass of warm water for 5 minutes.

Hi Sally!
Thanks so much for this recipe! I’ve only been baking for about a year and although I am constantly making 3 ingredient cake mix cookies, this is only the second real cookie recipe I have ever used. The first was another one of yours which unfortunately didn’t work out. I realised later on that I had added WAY too much flour. However………. THESE WERE INCREDIBLE!!!! They look all puffy and crinkly when they come out of the oven. Just like in a bakery! The taste is amazing, too! Melt in the mouth! I only took them out of the oven a minute ago and I’m already scoffing them. Even though they are burning my tongue hahaha
♥X♥X♥

not bad, a little much on the choc. chips and a little greasy and buttery but other then that, pretty good. I’ve been searching for the perfect recipe and i think i found it. every time i make choc. chip cookies, i use a different recipe, but now i will just make this. Thanks!

I just made this with my 3 kids and they are very proud and happy with the cookies they made. The cookies taste great!

The only issue is the cookies did not spread out much so that they looked like mini buns! I used a weighing scale to measure the ingredients and did my best to follow your instructions to the letter. One thing I could not do was to use a silicone mat. . They are not locally available so I used baking sheets lined with alumnum foil.

We will be doing another batch soon. Is it ok to use regular salted butter instead of unsalted? There is only one brand of unsalted butter in my country and they cost 3x as much as a salted one.

Yours are pretty much the ONLY cookie recipes I will use anymore because they never, ever fail me. I live in Colorado so elevation is an issue, but all I do is half the baking soda/powder and they always turn out beautifully. I have been using your recipe for THE Chocolate Chip cookie for years and it is my absolute favorite but this recipe had me curious and I had to try it-with the melted butter. They are fantastic! Not quite as fluffy and soft as the other recipe but definitely a keeper. Thanks for always coming through!

Hi, I love how detailed your instructions are. I made these cookies last night and followed the instructions but the cookies didn’t really flatten and are hard on the outside and cake-like on the inside. Not chewy at all :/ do you know what could’ve went wrong??

Mine didn’t spread either. I let them cool for a couple hours before rolling them into the balls and then refrigerated for 24 hrs. I took them straight from the fridge to the oven. I’m wondering if I should have let them sit out for a bit before putting them in the oven? Maybe that would’ve helped them spread. We called them our “cookie balls”. They tasted really good right away but those that weren’t eaten became rock hard. I will make the rest of the dough tonight.